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Randall S. Newton, August 24, 2007
In 2003 Alibre, Inc. accused former employee Roman Voznyuk of
stealing the source code for Alibre Design and trying to pass it off as
a new product called RaceCAD. The Russian national, recently living in
Canada, was arrested August 6 as he attempted to enter the US for a
brief holiday at Niagara Falls.
Background
Voznyuk was an employee of Alibre, Inc. (Richardson, Texas) until he
was laid off in 2003. According to Alibre founder Paul Grayson, Voznyuk
was unable to find other work as a programmer in the US, so he returned
to his native Russia. Soon after that, Voznyuk began selling a product
called RaceCAD Design Professional over the Internet. Alibre quickly
identified the product as Alibre Design and began efforts to block
Voznyuk. Alibre and the authorities have been pursuing Voznyuk ever
since.
As originally reported in CADCAMNet, Alibre initiated criminal and
civil action against Voznyuk in October of 2003. Backing them up were
Spatial Technologies, D-Cubed (now part of UGS), and the Open Design
Alliance, since Alibre Design contained licensed software code from
these companies.
Alibre hired the late Joe Greco to conduct an independent comparison
of the two products. He concluded that the interface and operation of
RaceCAD was a direct copy of Alibre Design. “It’s obvious with even a
cursory review that RaceCAD is essentially an unauthorized version of
Alibre Design, down to every menu command, icon, and dialog box,” said
Greco in his report to Alibre.
When Alibre contacted Voznyuk, he offered to “settle” with Alibre and
discontinue the English version of RaceCAD if Alibre agreed to give him
the right to sell the Russian version of Alibre Design. Alibre chose
instead to file legal actions, and it bought Google advertisements in
both English and Russian warning those who used the search term
“RaceCAD” that the software was illegal.
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